Waiting
by aussie girl1990
Summary: KakashiHinata oneshot.Some people never what they're feeling, and one day they'll be too late just like Kakashi. “Gone… blood… clothes…” Sakura cried, fear gripped his heart, "Who?"


Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Notes: I AM GOING TO BE AN AUNT! In six months we'll have a baby running around our house. My sister had her first ultrasound on the 1st of September and we got to see the baby. I have pictures in my live journal you are welcome to look at.

Also, school is getting harder and I have almost a million and one projects due.

This is a Kakashi and Hinata drabble because at the moment they are in the lead of the pole on my profile. If you haven't, please vote.

Waiting

He was waiting. It was a cold, almost winter now. He looks up at the dreary grey sky that looked heavy and he felt a twinge of happiness as he watched the clouds move slowly, he felt mostly bitter towards them. He almost hated the way Shikamaru would envy the clouds, how he sat there hour after hour just envying them.

Why, Kakashi didn't understand, why envy clouds. They moved too fast, they change all the time and could disappear the second you take your eyes off them.

They also reminded him of her.

She wasn't a fast mover. She rarely changed. But she did disappear.

And this place that he was standing was all he had left.

This area almost an hour away form the village, where it was green grass with many wild flowers and this one large tree that she would sit under and tell him about her pain of her crush and her friend getting married.

If he thinks harder he could almost hear her angel soft voice stuttering next to him,

'_I-I love h-him K-Kakashi. B-but I al-also am f-friends with S-Sakura and w-want her to b-be happy.' _

He could see her in his minds eye, sitting on the ground her head down while silent tears made their own track down her young pale face. Her fingers caressing a patch of grass not wanting to tear any of the fragile blades.

'_W-will I e-ever find l-love?'_

He could have said it then, 'I love you,' but then she would have ran away in disbelief and avoided him. He wanted her to _see _him, _need_ him like he needed her and the field in which they talked.

He could hear himself saying, '_Of course you will, Hinata, soon a young handsome, strong ninja, not unlike myself really, will get to you fall in love with him.'_

He can recall her childish giggle and how when she lifted her tear stained face her eyes danced with happiness.

'_I-I g-glad I h-have you K-Kakashi.'_

He wiped her tears away that day like he normally did when she cried, and she blushed, almost glowed, like she normally did.

A normal day it seemed as they talked under the old weeping willow, normal how the sky was as grey and cold as their sadness and normal at how the clouds would pass as would their disappointment of their life.

It was their last talk that he tried hard not to remember but today it seemed perfect to recall those few hours in which his life burned brightly in a horrible disfiguring way.

The sky crackled and drops of rain fell, _'Yes,'_ he thought,_ 'The perfect day.'_

-

The sun was hidden by dark clouds, a bad omen he always thought, but today Hinata called him out and he was never one to reject and invite from her.

He arrived early, or late, he wasn't sure because she wasn't there. Normally she'd have been sitting on one of the roots of the large weeping willow. But she wasn't.

He felt worried, she was never late, maybe he got the time wrong? Maybe she stood him up? Wait, it wasn't a date, and when Hinata says 'I'll be there soon' it means she'll come.

He fretted about for another five minutes before he saw her small, but womanly body, walking towards him.

She had a shy smile and was playing with the cord off pale blue jacket.

"You were late?" he was confused, she was fine. Did she forget the time?

Her smile grew bigger, "Y-you're normally l-late. I-I didn't wa-want to wait."

His visible eyebrow lifted, and he smiled under his mask, "Instead you made me wait?" It was true that he was always late, even to their meeting, but not even in a million years did he think she'd do what she had done.

She was teasing him slightly, and he was amused.

She sat on her root, careful not to get her black pants dirty, but she didn't talk like she usually would have. Instead her head was up and looking across the grassy planes.

It was almost ten minutes before she spoke in a serious voice, never once looking at him.

"Y-you know I-I thought my l-life was over w-when Naruto married." Kakashi was slightly surprised, it had been over a year now since Naruto and Sakura had married and Hinata had rarely spoken about it.

She took in a deep breath and he could see her burning blush on her cheeks, her fingers fidgeted with the bark from the tree and it seemed to him that she wanted to run.

"B-but y-you told me t-that I would f-find someone right?" she made eye contact with him for a split second, she seemed startled to see him looking at her and turned her head away. "W-well I did. I-I really l-like t-this person," it seemed really hard for her to say as he watched tears start to form in her colourless eyes.

"A-and I-I told myself that i-if I still l-liked h-him in a year, I-I tell him." She took a deep breath, "I w-wrote a letter and b-buried i-it here." She made a wide hand gesture referring to the grass field. "O-Only I know wh-where it is. B-But it h-has everything i-in there."

She stood up and without looking at him whispered, "Please meet me here tomorrow." And walked off.

All Kakashi could think of was, 'She looks like she's trying not to run', and then the thought crashed into his head and that night he got no sleep only one thought ran through his mind over and over.

_Is it me? Does she like me?_

He got to the tree late, hoping that she would be there but he was greeted with small cold drops of freshly formed rain drops.

It was just a sprinkle at first but as he leaned against the large trunk of the tree a sheet of heavy rain fell onto the ground turning dirt into mud.

He knew Hinata would come even in this weather because she would come to the tree with it was snowing, hailing, and once when they were on a flood warning.

He wondered sometimes why she cared so badly about this tree but he never asked.

Kakashi looked at his watch and sighed, he had been waiting for almost five hours and he noticed something, it hit him hard.

She wasn't coming.

Maybe she didn't like him, maybe she's off with the guy she liked right now… when they should have been here talking like normal.

He didn't wait any longer and walked out into the thrashing rain, each drop hit him and stung like a needle but he didn't hurry home he still dawdled, waiting, hoping, that she would come.

It was the next morning that Kakashi woke to the sound of bashing on his door. Getting out of his old bed he slightly stumbled but managed to avoid stubbing his toe on his wooden bedside table.

Placing his mask carefully over his face he headed towards his front door, before turning the knob he quickly ran his calloused hand through his wildly messed sliver hair, he liked the way it would stick up.

But when he opened the door and saw her face he wished nothing more than to be in bed having a nightmare.

"Sakura," Kakashi choked out, he felt his heart start to pound, and his hands reached out and grabbed her shoulders. "What is it? What's wrong" He tried to ask calmly but the words came out in a rush of fear and panic.

"Ahhh," she let out a wail of broken cries and he brought her to his chest and hugged her in a fatherly way. "Gone… blood… clothes…" he didn't understand _'Let it not be Naruto or Sasuke, let them be alive' _he found himself praying.

But the next words out of her mouth were like diving through ice and into the cold depths of an ocean.

"Hin…. Hinata… dead…" She let out a string of words that blurred as he focused on those last two words.

_Hinata. Dead._

His eyes widen and he grabbed her shoulders once again and yanked her away from his body. Holding her at arms length he looked at her bloodshot eyes that were drowned in tears.

She had a fearful look on her face as Kakashi gripped her shoulders hard enough for her to flinch.

He looked her in the eyes and asked in a bone chilling cold voice, "Are you playing me?" he hissed. "Is what you saying the truth? Hinata didn't have a mission yesterday." He ignored Sakura as she whispered,

"_You're hurting me."_

"TELL ME!" He yelled in is former student with a breaking voice filled with fear, grief, disbelief and anger.

His grip on the pink haired ninja loosened as he fell upon his knees and onto the cold wooden floor and try as he might, he couldn't keep those burning tears at bay. Sakura hold him tightly for most the morning as they both wept.

-

He kicks at the dirt near the root she used to sit on. It was once normal to see her sitting there, now it's normal to see it unoccupied.

She shouldn't have died. She wasn't even meant to be outside the village on that day but she was filling in for someone who had taken a day off to go to a party. Ambushed, they say, she was only going to help another ninja who was training and got badly hurt, nothing she couldn't handle alone.

But she's dead now isn't she.

Clearly something she was able to handle by herself.

The ninja she was meant to help was found dead. Just a little down the path you could see it everywhere, her blood. Red. Shining. Innocent. Young. Blood. Too much, they told him, wouldn't be able to live missing this much. She'd be dead. Found a necklace. Found a torn bloody jacket. Found a dead enemy ninja. Found her.

Found her, body on the rocks near the end of a stream. Dead. The cuts along her body. The bruises over her chest, legs, arms and neck. Her eyes closed. For that he was thankful, couldn't bear, just couldn't. To see those eyes and see that they are lifeless. Cold and glassy. Dead.

He visited the tree every week for as long as he could. Wanting to remember her. Hoping to see her. To hear her.

He met her cousin there once as he laid a white lily at the base of the tree. He didn't ask why Kakashi was there, didn't say anything. Both just stood there hoping that Hinata would magically grow out of the base of the tree.

But she didn't. And the both left.

He went back every year for seven long years. Each time he'd sit there and talk, hoping against hope that she'd hear him. Tell the tree and the wild flowers and the grass blade everything.

'Naruto and Sakura have another child, another girl. Naruto's bragging about it to everyone. Neji's married, has two children. Your team mates are fine, nothing really new about them. Everything else is the same' He'd whisper into the wind.

He kicked at the dirt and noticed something, the top of a jar.

He bent down and pulled the jar out. He looked at it,_ "I wrote a letter and buried it here." _His eyes widened, 'It couldn't be' he thought and he slowly unscrewed the lid.

Placing the lid on Hinata's root he took the note out. It was slightly damp and the paper was stained and browning, but still he could read it, it was Hinata's hand writing.

_To Kakashi_

_I'm glad you were always there for me, you are one of my best friends, but that is not all. I think I'm falling in love with you. It hurts sometimes when I think about it, you may not want to be with me, I stutter, I'm always shy and I'm weak right?_

_But I am, I am falling for you._

_I never told you about the tree did I?_

_My mother and father met their during their first meeting when they were fourteen, mum use to tell him he fell in love with her right away but it took her a while to feel the same. This tree is the place where I hoped to meet the man I would fall in love with, and he would fall in love with me. I had tried bring Naruto out there wishing tree to somehow bring us together._

_But instead that day Naruto sent you to tell me he wasn't going to tell me. I went home and cried but I never thought I'd see you again by the tree waiting for me. It seems the tree really did do some magic because even if you don't love me, I've fallen._

_Maybe a spell I guess. _

_Maybe one year from now when I give you this letter you'll have started to love me back right, or maybe I'm fooling myself. It doesn't matter, you said once that it's important to let people know how you feel. So even if you say no at least you'll know how I felt._

_I love Kakashi and I look forward to our talks all the time. I miss you when you're not there._

_Hinata._

His hands where shaking as he folded the note and placed back in the jar. He buried the jar deeper this time.

"I love you too Hinata," his voice was shaking as bad as his hands, "I always did."

He felt the wind pick up and knew that a storm was on the way.

He touched root one last time and turned and walked out on the grass heading back to the village.

She loved him, he loved her.

One day, just one maybe they will somehow meet again. But now… now he knows and now he can move on.

He never went to the tree again.

-

The end!

VOTE IN THE POLL IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY, and see if you can take over Kakashi Hinata or if you'll keep them at the top.

A one shot so need of alert. Just a review would be nice. Some of you may have noticed I change my writing style for a bit in the story. I wanted to try it out.

Jessica


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